Ever wondered why people of a particular community always stick together? One may wonder why this happens. A plausible reason has been reached that obedience to the principles of a particular community is the main reason why communities stick together. The paper that follows intends to show that there is a very close relationship between communities sticking out for each other and the sense of obligation that they feel due to obedience. This is indeed an issue that has both positive implications and negative. The essay that follows intends to show the impact of obedience on a community.
The paper mainly focuses on anthropology and the different ways in which people from different cultures relate to each other. The following is a brief insight of some of the topics that have been discussed in the article. The paper looks at ethnic groups and their relations to each other. How the ethnic groups conflict with each other and domination among these ethnic groups. The paper also looks at aboriginality, its authenticity and the concepts of the settler world.
The article also seeks to give a detailed elaboration of the concepts and methodological approaches that can be taken in the quest to address the issue of interethnic systems while putting emphasis on the critical topic of ethnography and the relationship between indigenous persons and their nation-states. The article also addresses the issue of nationality, identity and ethnicity and how these three issues affect indigenous individuals present in countries with international borders and how this brings conflict among the people. The topic of intertribal relations is also addressed and a detailed redefinition of politics, culture and ethnicity. The ethnic system in both Canada and Australia is also looked upon together with the ethnic groups in India and Brazil. Lastly the article addresses the influence of both ethnic identities and national identities in all the societies and a possible attempt towards a critical review.
The concept that was difficult to grasp in this article is that the terms used to describe one concept in a particular society can also be sufficiently used to describe another community. Those people that are in agreement with this notion insist that a common category can be used to analyze two or more cultures. On the other side, those who are against this suggestion a common category can not be used to analyze different cultures because such a thing would insinuate that the cultures are the same and there is no difference which is a wrong theoretical and practical assumption. It can also be seen in the article that just like anthropologists together with sociologists fail t o see the differences in varying cultures, in the same way so does the common citizen fail to see this in their perception of themselves and their interaction with other people.
This is also a difficult concept for the people in my community because more often than not when people live together for a period of time, the cultural beliefs of both communities are assimilated within both communities such that the possibility of seeing the difference using a concept that does not focus on common grounds becomes a problem. This is because the assimilation of culture between the different ethnic groups creates an aura of a common ground.
In retrospect, a critical observation of many hideous crimes committed were mainly executed more from the sense of duty than the carnal malice of committing the crime or a result of rebellion. A very good illustration of such an occurrence is the millions of Jews, homosexuals and a good number of gypsies that were killed in the Nazi regime that was under the authority of Hitler. Many people came to the conclusion that Germans had the tendency of obeying the command of anyone in authority which they attributed to character defects regardless of the kind of hideous crime a German was commanded to do.
It was as a result of this that Stanley Milgram decided to carry out a research that would outweigh this baseless conclusion. The aim of his research was to scrutinize how obedience operates and by wanting to show this nature of obedience, Milgram used an experiment with the aim of investigating the degree of obedience that would be demonstrated by participants who were to be administered with an electric shock from a teacher who received orders from another authority.
Milgram’s research found that for a large number of individuals, obedience is a quality that is ingrained within them that tends to override all sorts of moral and ethical practices. The discoveries made by Milgram brought out the fact that people have the tendency to strongly believe in a particular concept or idea but there is a high possibility that these same people might overlook their strong beliefs if they are faced with a situation or a higher authority that requires them to forego their beliefs all in the name of being obedient. A justified assumption can be made that for every single person in the society, at one point in time or the other, they might overlook the importance of their person feelings and conform to the voice in authority (Milgram, par 13).
With these findings done by Milgram it can be concluded that obedience had a major role to do with the mass killings that were carried by the Germans under the sole authority of Hitler. It was this unexplainable nature of obedience and complying according to the rules of someone in authority that resulted to the holocaust that led to the killings of many Jews and gypsies in Germany. The military forces overlooked their moral and sympathetic principles because they were influenced by another form of authority.
This same explanation can be given to the kind of obedience people have to their communities. It’s this feeling of obedience that ties people in terms of nationality, ethnicity or cultural beliefs. Obedience scholarships have been able to detect the possibility of obedience having a major role in cross cultural differences. It can therefore be speculated that crimes of obedience are committed on the basis of cultural factors and the propensity for an individual to feel as though they have a moral responsibility towards their communities.
The obligation that an individual feels because of the sense of obedience that one feels towards their community is the driving force for the discrimination that occurs due to race, nationality and cultural practices of a particular community. This sense of obedience to their communities is what drives communities to develop national boundaries because they feel like they need to protect their identities as a particular people or community. In retrospect, all sorts of discrimination and alignments result as a feeling of obligation.
In conclusion, obedience to the voice in authority can lead an individual to overlook their personal principles and commit hideous crimes that are morally wrong. This same sense of obedience is the main reason why communities hold themselves together in their belief. The two excerpts indicate that obedience and community principles are correlated. Obedience to the principles of a community is what keeps the communities intact.
Works Cited
Milgram, Stanley. Behavioral Study of Obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67 (1963): 371-78